PLAN B FOR PLANET B

Planet Centred Forum, as an ecocentric
network and thinking hub, has always aimed to make planet centred conversations
deeper, wider and longer-term than in most ‘green’ networks and campaigning
networks.

As regular followers of our bulletins,
seminars and publications will know we have constantly aimed to point to the values that underlie different
approaches to the world rather than responding to the physical behaviours, real
time activities and clashes that arise from these conflicting value systems.

Further we have at times challenged
the assumptions of both environmental and ecocentric movements. In particular
their use of the words ‘ought’ and ‘must’.

This is very relevant today.

As possible tipping points in both the
ecosystem and our interlocking economic, social and psychological structures
loom into view, the common response is that ‘we’ must change course, turn the ship around, ‘before it is too late’.
Call this Plan A.

Some pessimists/realists are already
declaring that it is too late – yet
without any strategy other than resignation.

Certainly these transition points will
catapult organic life on Earth (including some surviving humans) into a very
different world. In that world the values conflict will likely be between some
attempts to recover and nurture surviving biosphere, surviving human clusters,
around values of humility before and
partnership with nature … and a ‘last
man standing’ struggle to control any residual ‘assets’ (as they would see
them) in that depleted world.

Even if most of us today are unlikely
to survive as individuals into those times, the work that we do now to develop
and strengthen humble and co-operative values will have some influence on the
mix of attitudes among survivors.

In addition there are wisdoms even now
being developed that are anticipating the possible conditions likely to be
encountered. To give just one example, the experiments with ‘Pleistocene’
perennial grasses and pulses by The Land Institute in Kansas. https://landinstitute.org

A caution:

The Earth Policy Institute, which
closed in 2015, argued strongly for a Plan B: “rescuing a planet under stress
and a civilisation in trouble”.

It was, as the sub-title implies,
about alternative strategies for preventing
planetary breakdown, not for attending to possible post-transition worlds. In
other words the EPI was totally committed to Plan A.